Montenegro Girl x
Swimming against the tide
It strikes me as my life has moved on, how easy it is to lose sight of what makes your heart sing.
There is an unspoken but very real and strong view from society that dreams and the things of the heart are somehow frivolous, unrealistic or indulgent.
After all there are so many other more important and pressing things to consider and tend to.
But just as much as marriage should be less about being a “good” wife or husband and more about simple love for the person before you. So life should be less about ticking off a list of responsibilities and tasks, and more about living a life of integrity and meaning. And by that I mean a life meaningful to you. Not to your boss or your friend on Facebook.
Because otherwise, what’s the point? When we lie on our death beds, I don’t think I’ll be congratulating myself because I ticked off all the jobs on my list. I’ll be thinking of how I lived in the important things. How I was as a person with the people I cared about …those I really cared about. Wondering if I lived according to the deep things within me. Or did I pay far too much attention to the surface things that just kept shouting the loudest?
It’s easier not to swim against the tide
I think our British society has always been inclined this way, but as I have got older I see that it intensifies, as our responsibilities increase with family and jobs and so on, and the concerns and the to do list grow. Sometimes to a point where you can wonder what it’s really all about.
My own experience has shown that it is all too easy to get carried along with what everyone else is doing and thinking as important. So much so that your own heart and dreams and things that once gave your life meaning can feel a distant memory. Trampled into the ground or at best pushed to one side as unnecessary and overly idealistic.
But where’s the vision and the purpose in our lives? Where is the determination and the integrity to follow what is of meaning to us and build a life of our choosing?
Not without regard to other people. Not at all costs. No, of course not.
But, I struggle to see many people around me living like they have a vision or a sense of purpose. Especially in the specific season of life I am currently in when people have young children and aging parents.
But I have learnt that you have to live with faith and vision and have courage to press on in the face of opposition.
Salmon Fishing in Yemen & swimming against the tide
One of my favourite films is Salmon Fishing in Yemen. For me the central message of the film is about faith and vision and living a life of meaning. Which often means swimming upstream. Swimming against the tide.
There is a wonderful scene in the film where the main actor is struggling to make his way through the throngs of rush hour commuters pressing towards him in the opposite direction.
If we live on a default button in life, then we will simply go with the flow of everyone around us and live by what society says. Because it is easier and in reality more comfortable to fit into what the cultural norm of the majority is.
The thing is with dreams, they are not always practical (as Ben Hillman from The Place in the Sun once said). And following them is usually a bit messy. But as a great book says, ‘Without a vision the people perish’.
Montenegro & my own version of swimming against the tide
When I decided to buy a place in Montenegro, it wasn’t considered a particularly “safe” mainstream or normal thing to do. I lived in a small, cheaper house and drove a reliable but unfashionable old woman’s car, when my friends owned large, impressive family homes and drove new cars.
But despite the discomfort of living a life that didn’t appear as ‘successful’ as my peers, I had a picture in my head and a passion that kept me moving forward with the idea. I believed in what I was doing and a vision was forming.
It hasn’t been the easiest road at times owning a place in Montenegro. It’s felt like an emotional rollercoaster at times, trying to sort practical issues with the apartment or deal with inefficient Montenegrin bureaucracy. Especially during the credit crunch times when the property market went stagnant.
But I have learnt that you have to live with faith and vision and have courage to press on in the face of opposition, in whatever guise it comes.
Be it people’s opinions or slow foreign electricity companies.
Because in the end a life well lived is what we long for deep down.
Not a treadmill, well run.
Montenegro Girl x
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